the Christian Church. They distinguished its two branches by the titles of Ontology and Natural Theology; the former relating to Being in general, the latter to GOD and to Angels. To these branches the schoolmen added the Philosophy of the Human Mind, as relating to an immaterial substance; distinguishing this last science by the title of Pneumatology.

From this arrangement of Natural Theology, and of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, they were not very likely to prosper, as they gradually came to be studied with the same spirit as Ontology, which may safely be pronounced to be the most idle and absurd speculation that ever employed the human faculties. Nor has the evil been yet remedied by the contempt into which the schoolmen have fallen in more modern times. On the contrary, as their arrangement of the objects of Metaphysics is still very generally retained, the Philosophy of the Mind is not unfrequently understood, even by those who have a predilection for the study of it, as a speculation much more analogous to Ontology than to Physics; while, in the public opinion, notwithstanding the new aspect it begins to assume, in consequence of the lights struck out by Bacon, Locke, and their followers, it continues to share largely in that discredit, which has been justly incurred by the greater part of those discussions, to which, in common with it, the epithet Metaphysical is indiscriminately applied by the multitude.

I have been led into this detail, not from the most distant idea of proposing any alteration in that

use of the words Metaphysics and Physics, which has now universally obtained, but merely to guard myself against the charge of affectation or singularity, when I so often recur in these pages to the analogy between the inductive science of Mind, and the inductive science of Matter. The attempt which has been made of late, by some very ingenious writers, to dispute the claims of the former to so honourable an affinity, must plead my apology for the length of the preceding discussion; as well as for some remarks which I now propose to offer, upon the arguments which have been alleged in opposition to its pretensions. To myself, I must own, that the more I reflect on the subject, the more close and striking does the analogy appear.

CHAPTER SECOND.

WHEN

HEN I first ventured to appear before the public as an author, I resolved that nothing should ever induce me to enter into any controversy in defence of my conclusions, but to leave them to stand or to fall by their own evidence. From the plan of inductive investigation which I was conscious of having steadily followed, as far as I was able, I knew, that whatever mistakes might be detected in the execution of my design, no such fatal consequences were to be dreaded to my general undertaking, as might have been justly apprehended, had I presented to the world a connected system, founded on gratuitous hypotheses, or on arbitrary definitions. The detections, on the contrary, of my occasional errors, would, I flattered myself, from the invariable consistency and harmony of truth, throw new lights on those inquiries which I had conducted with greater success; as the correction of a trifling misstatement in an authentic history is often found, by completing an imperfect link, or reconciling a seeming contradiction, to dispel the doubts which hung over the more faithful and accurate details of the narrative.

10

In this hope, I was fortified by the following sentence of Lord Bacon, which I thought I might apply to myself without incurring the charge of presumption." Nos autem, si quâ in re vel male "credidimus, vel obdormivimus et minùs attendi"mus, vel defecimus in via et inquisitionem abru

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pimus, nihilo minùs IIS MODIS RES NUDAS ET "APERTAS EXHIBEMUS, ut errores nostri notari et "separari possint; atque etiam, ut facilis et expe"dita sit laborum nostrorum continuatio."

As this indifference, however, about the fate of my particular doctrines, arose from a deep-rooted conviction, both of the importance of my subject, and of the soundness of my plan, it was impossible for me to be insensible to such criticisms as were directed against either of these two fundamental assumptions. Some criticisms of this description I had, from the first, anticipated; and I would not have failed to obviate them in the introduction to my former work, if I had not been afraid to expose myself to the imputation of prolixity, by conjuring up objections for the purpose of refuting them. I longed, therefore, for an opportunity of being able to state these objections in the less suspicious words of another; and still more in the words of some writer, whose talents might contribute to draw the public attention to an argument, in which I conceived the credit of my favourite studies to be so peculiarly interested. For such an opportunity, I am indebted to a very able article in the Edinburgh Review; in replying to which, I shall have occasion to obviate most of the objections which I had fore

seen, as well as various others which, I must own, had never occurred to me.

The censures which, in this article, fall, personal ly on myself, are expressed with a delicacy well entitled to my sincere thanks, and are intermingled with many flattering expressions of regard from my unknown, but friendly critic :-and of the more general and weighty animadversions on the practical utility of my studies, I have but little reason to complain, when I consider, that they apply with equal force, not only to such writers as Locke, Condillac, and Reid, but, in a far greater degree, to the Father of Experimental Philosophy. How exactly those views of mine, which have, on this occasion, been called in question, coincide with the general spirit of the Novum Organum, will, I trust, appear from the following remarks; which will amount much less to a laboured defence of my own opìnions, than to a correction of what I conceive to be a very mistaken representation of Lord Bacon's doctrines. †

Edinburgh Review, Vol. III. p. 269, et seq.

My desire to obviate the effect of these misstatements, must apologize for the Latin extracts from Bacon, with which I am obliged to load a few pages of this Dissertation. I once intended to have translated them; but found myself quite unable to preserve the weighty and authoritative tone of the original. There is something, besides, in the ipsissima verba employed by Bacon, which every person, much conversant with his works, regards with a sort of religious reverence; and which, certainly, lays hold of the imagination and of the memory with peculiar facility and force. I wish, at the same time, most anxiously to see an English version of the Novum Organum, executed by